Sprint Q3 results still reflect hard times for number three provider

Sprint seems to keep bleeding, keep, keep, bleeding subscribers. After losing 801,000 post-paid subscribers, which is slightly better than the 870,000 that analysts expected, Sprint might need to really change its game to do more than just stay afloat. Consequently, Sprint’s losses for the quarter are a whopping $478 million compared to $326 million YoY. Revenue dropped about nine percent to $8.04 billion. Interestingly enough, Sprint’s prepaid service, Boost, added over 600,000 subscribers thanks to Boost’s $50 unlimited plan. But with its Simply Everything packages including Any Mobile, Any Time, and hardware like the Palm Pre and HTC Hero, Sprint could be looking to shrink its quarterly losses in the future and maybe even see some positive gain.

Paul you work At Verizon. I seen your fat ass and your name badge….Why all the hate you idiot.

b.N

Amen.

http://www.twitter.com/orlandophoneguy orlandophoneguy

The vomit comet keeps dropping, no surprise. Seriosuly in 4 years time they will have lost 25% of their subscribers at this rate. They will need to merge or go belly up. It’s like a phonecall you know you have to make but put it off for as long as you can with excuses, or in this case, whorishly low plans.

chris t

Wow Sprint needs bailout cash ASAP. If they only had CDMA they’d be in last place instead of T-Mobile.

Chris Culp

….Sprint does have CDMA. T-mobile has GSM

ankit

I say sprint needs to live up to the rumor and get bought out by tmobile. And I’ll switch and finally let go of AT

Bong Hits

mememmememememememem, I have an idea. offer everything that vzw offers but for less, including VVM. Sprint is only network that still charges for call forwarding. Then, don’t fall behind 4 years to release new phones, i.e. BB. Cut that down to 1 or 2 years. Then suk my dik and we have a winnner!

chuck

I think Sprint is losing more customers now just because they’re losing customers in the first place. Before, they had major issues with phone offerings, pricing, and customer service. Even their coverage in some areas was quite bad in the past. They developed a bad reputation and started losing customers.

But now, their phones are quite attractive and their rate plans are awesome. Their network has a decent reputation and they have a large, reliable 3G network. Sure, their customer service still isn’t the best, but it has been improving and really isn’t that much different than AT&Ts. I would really consider switching to them due to their great offers, but I’m weary about investing money on Sprint phones at a time when it looks like they are on the verge of collapse. Who wants to join a company that is losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers a month? I suspect many people feel the same way.

COCOViper

I don’t think they’re anywhere near “on the verge of collapse” with ~$6 Billion in the bank and despite losing 600,000 post-paid customers, their net loss was actually 135,000 customers due to Boost. Yea it may be a technicality but these are still paying customers of Sprint.

So yea they are losing customers and it’s a big problem, but at that rate they could theoretically continue that pace for about 90 years (49 Million / (135 thousand*4 Quarters a year). Just trying to make the point that they aren’t anywhere near disappearing.

Mankato

@COCOVIPER. The worrisome factor here is not net addition. It is the amount of money they are generating. While BOOST numbers look great they don’t generate as much money as post paid customers. That is why you see 9% drop in revenue. That is the real bad news.

Without BOOST, Sprint would be 4th largest carrier in USA. If T-Mobile’s new Even More Plus plan takes off, it would spell a bad news for BOOST. That should be a concern for Sprint.

Don Louie Cantone

You talk about the money generated by pre-pay, what money is generated by the EM and EM+ plans? Sprint is suffering from past reputation and poor marketing. T Mobile had a few quarters of low add and decided to implement the plans they have now which is what Hesse when he took over

COCOViper

Actually that’s likely not true for a couple reasons:

1) Most of the reason for the large growth from Boost is due to their $50/mo unlimited offering. $50/mo is a very high ARPU for a prepaid plan and is pretty close to Sprint’s overall ARPU. So if the majority of those Boost adds are $50/mo that’s a good thing.

2) Since Boost is prepaid, there is little to no device subsidy. This combined with the fact that Boost subscribers are using excess iDEN capacity that Sprint paid for like 4 years ago means Sprint starts making money on these customers almost immediately.

3) The reason they lost more money this quarter despite losing fewer customers is actually due to higher device subsidies- i.e. the reason they brought in more customers is because they were buying the Pre or the Tour- devices that are heavily subsidized. Att ran into this same problem with the iPhone- if you add lots of highly subsidized device customers the first quarter your bottom line takes a hit, then you make it up in subsequent quarters.

JayMonster

They might be able to last 90 years in terms of subscribers, but they blew threw $478 Million in the last Quarter (or roughly $1.9 Billion annualized)… at that rate, they burn through all their cash in 3 years assuming everything stays status quo. But it is not, they lost 100 million more this past quarter than the previous… at that clip… unless something changes, the company could have a shorter life than that 2 year contract. Not saying it will… just that it could.

manny

i really feel bad for sprint the problem is they are way too reliant on roaming. their native coverage area is smaller than t-mobile and nextel, and roaming doesn’t get you new customers. if they continue to expand their native coverage and get new customers than maybe they can become a profitable company again.

Brian

you should look again, pretty sure you are wrong.

manny

wrong about what? sprint has great coverage with roaming on verizon, but their native coverage (non-roaming) area is really small.

nyynke98

Manny, actually Sprint’s native network is equally as large as Verizon’s, however, they are a fantastic marketing machine, for example, their newest commercial with the maps, news flash, that is their network with ROAMING

Don Louie Cantone

That is a misconception and an error, Sprint’s coverage is number 3 in the country but call quality and data speed/reliability is 1 or 2.

Blackberry Bold

Now, it’s a T-mobile’s chance to gain 3 rd place.

YoY

Hey Marc,

Year-over-year typically applies to percents, not nominal values. If you want to use YoY, say it this way:

Sprint’s losses for the quarter are a whopping $478 million compared to $326 million a year ago. Revenue dropped about nine percent YoY to $8.04 billion.

bluehorseshoe

Layoffs are already being discussed.

Name*

As well they should be. They need to fire about 3/4 of the staff they have in Kansas City.
Ever been to their “campus”?
Spend 30 minutes in that cluster-fuck and you will understand why this company can’t do anything right.
If the management of your company is incompetent, it works it’s way down through the channels to each individual retail location.

bluehorseshoe

Luckily I don’t work there, but a cousin of mine does in Colorado. Time for everyone to grab a parachute.

Nerdherder

Or a saucer-like balloon

Name*

Welcome to the “Now Network”, current population, 49…err, 48million.
Right now, 80,000 customers are in Sprint stores around the country.
20,000 of them are signing up for new service, while 60,000 of them are ending their contracts.

Brian

I have been with Sprint for nearly four years. I love the service and they have been improving each year I have been with them. I personally do not see the reason why people bash Sprint, nor why Verizon is so loved. I hate Verizon.

manny

if it wasnt for Verizon’s roaming agreement sprint wouldnt have service outside any major city. So eventhough you hate verizon you should thank them for building a great network for you to roam on.

Don Louie Cantone

You do realize the same can be said of verizon, you must be off the same Kool-Aid VZW drink believing %0% of Sprint calls are roaming

BigJ

Actually Verizon didn’t even build there network like sprint did, Verizon purchased several affiliates and gained there networks, becoming this huge conglomerate, Sprint just makes poor choices, Nextel was the biggest mistake, they paid 25 million for a dead technology and now they are spread thin. they cant even sale Nextel for 6 million dollars.

Djblois

A majority of the customers they are probably losing falls under Nextel. They have some of the best rate plans and some very attractive phones. Next month they are getting rid of the charge for call forwarding – so that is one less thing people will complain about. I have had them for over 2 years and I am very pleased by their coverage. They need to speed up 4G adoption.

Sir Charles

Brian, seeing as you’ve been a member of Sprint for the past four years, you think it’s possible that your ignorance of first hand experience with Verizon could you lead to your ‘animosity’ for them? Peep the recent posts, pal. Verizon’s squashing these shabby carriers, knawmean?

mistermix

I left Sprint over 6 years ago because of coverage.

T-Mobile might become #3 because of Sprint, but I doubt it. Both have the same problem: weak networks. Weak networks means they have to lower price to attract customers. But when they lower price, they lower margin and don’t have the revenue to build out their network, plus the price-conscious are all going prepaid anyway.

Not sure about T-Mobile’s last quarters report but during the Quarter before last they added about 400,000+ customers. That is not good in compare to AT&T and Verizon, but it could have been worse ( read Sprint).

It will be interesting to see T-Mobile’s last quarterly report.

Unreal…

I love sprint. I rarely ever experience roaming (Los Angeles area). My one complaint is their device line up. If sprint could keep pace with Verizon in offering new deivces I think they would do much better. Maybe they should make a serious push for the iPhone once At&t exclusivity runs out in 2010. They can even get a takeover plan going with Apple and Sprint could be a subsidiary of Apple. Sprint will be much weaker in a year and Apple will be able to push their products on their own network. Everybody wins.

Name*

I think that’s the first time since 1998 that I have seen the words “Sprint” and “win” used in the same paragraph. =-)

JayMonster

I think that is the first time (as far back as I can remember) that somebody showed envy of Verizon for their PHONE LINEUP!!! bwahahahaha.

I have stuck with Verizon Wireless for over 15 years now, and it was IN SPITE of their phone selection. If Sprint users are envying the phones (prior to the most recent new Smart Phones)… well… that is really sad.

Nerdherder

Seriously! Verizon is well known for their lack of decent handsets. Even though Im a Verizon subscriber, AT&T as the best mobile device lineup by far.

Verizon has the Droid on the horizion but that is it man. Sprint has the best all around line-up in the industry, the only thing really missing at all is the iPhone but that is up to Apple not Sprint.

sam

So u guys meant to say “Sprint Sucks” :)
Whether its choice of phones, their network, their customer service, exorbitant phone pricing, and less than competitive plans. They need to stand for something, they dont have a iphone… they try to bring in palm pre, and priced it more than iphone. And the plan is not any cheaper. So who wants a network, thats catching up and not offering good promotions.

manny

there’s actually some good that comes out from having less people on your network, it becomes faster and more reliable.

maybe thats why Sprints EVDO is faster than Verizons EVDO because noone is using it.

guy

how is it that sprint is still in business? I can’t remember the last time I heard that they weren’t losing money or subscribers…

fresh2death618

sprint needs the iphone

betchplz

So wait a second, excuse me if I’m not reading into it completely.. are these 100% sprint customers they lost (CDMA) or (iDEN) Nextel customers? I can see people desperately trying to get off of the iDEN network if they need a phone with more coverage and real data.

Don Louie Cantone

I see Sprint missing a message, they are missing that person to tell the story of how good Sprint is. I don’t want the CEO as the spokesperson, get Tom Brady or something

Frank

Sprint used to give out shirts to it’s employee’s almost every year and do you ever see anyone wearing one? If the employee’s are too embarrased to acknowledge they work for SPRINT think of how hard it would be to get someone else to vouch for them.

dan

sprints problems arnt there netowork its there rep, people hate them with a passion i sell phones and when i even offer sprint i get a quick no, just because of past expernces. I really think no matter how much they lower there prices there gonna lose people u can only treat people like crap for so long before they give ya the axe, to be honest i think they kinda derserve what they get

Average_User

WOW, I cannot figure why the defects. Is the CS that much of an issue? Is the iPhone really worth defecting for?

I really feel bad for Sprint. If this continues, Hesse will be shown the door by investors. I don’t know if there is an industry person who can turn Sprint around.